Cheap carbon frames form China, anyone care to recommend one?

Been looking for a light rigid HT for a long time, fancied a flat bar gravel bike type of thing 1X etc, don’t care if it’s 10/11 or 12 speed, found some DT swiss wheels on Creast circa 1500g for £320, need & frame/fork & bits which equal cheap & light (yes I have picked two) & I have seen THIS on ebay.
I know the subject has been done to near death but looking for recommendations from people who have any type of cheap Chinese carbon to tell me they are great & I should get X one.
Come on tell me you bought one & it hasn’t cracked & killed you on the first ride, or tell me to look elsewhere.
TIA.

i have an Ican gravel frame and forks that was originally gravel setup for adventure races, before gravel was a fing. its now my road bike. my wife’s gravel bike is an ican 29er mtb frame and forks with hunt gravel wheels. they are now 6 or 7 years old and get a lot of abuse, used for light bike packing too. cheap, light frames built up with quality components.
I’m delighted with them both. needed a wee bit of frame prep before building up’ i remember having to face the brake mounts slightly.
highly recommend them, I’m just wondering now when i need to think about replacing them

Thank you, do you have a link to the place you bought them from?

There is a web forum dedicated to this stuff called Chiner or maybe Chinertown. Lots of current chat on there

Ian

Ican website

https://icancycling.com/collections/uk-warehouse

they apparently have a UK warehouse so you shouldnt have to pay import duty on purchase.

I cant vouch for Ican as I have never bought from them, I have bought light bicycle carbon wheels from China and had no issue.

Did notice the 650B MTB frame reduced to £157 !!

I really liked my Hongfu although weirdly my anti virus has started blocking their site. There are several “brands” that are much of a muchness and seem to look after people. I can only recommend them from experience. There is a huuuuuge thread on MTBR as well.

The main issue for me if I were looking now is the majority are quite short (low reach) and upright (high stack) with very little standover. That may or may not bother you OP, but geometry may be a pretty big factor in narrowing down your options.

If you search for “Chameleon Carbon Frame” on ebay it is mm exact to the Santa Cruz Highball. Just weirdly a few mm longer on the chainstay length. No experience of “Airwolf” or the import duties but this has all got me curious again 🙁 😀

I’ve 2 frames from ican.
One gravel frame – which i bought on aliexpress as it was cheaper with free postage
one XC frame – which is 5 years old and still great.

You can tell they are a cheaper frame – by the small details. like cable routing… but once you get obver that – its been great. nothing a drill can’t solve

gravel frame i bought – And it was the correct weight 🙂
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33052451791.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.26794c4dCSwHeG

Has anyone come across anything reputable (as in, proven by ownership at least) in the way of MTBs with adjustable drop-outs?
Option to run single speed on a cheap carbon frame is very appealing.

<edit- wrong thread!>

I would avoid tideace. I think they trade under another name too, can’t remember though. Edit: BXT is the name.

Bought a frame from them which cracked at the seat clamp.

They did send another quickly though.

Both frames had a huge degree of unevenness inside, big bulges and ridges including at the down/head tube joint.

The fork had a drilled brake and from the drilled hole you could see the voids.

Seat post was also undersized.

A £300 lesson.

Other brands may be better. My experience is they are the cheapest for a reason. Should also add that this was 2 years ago so things may have changed. I never road either frame, just sat them on the turbo.

And as an aside I got a road wheelset 2nd hand which were Tokyo wheels branded. However they are believed to be ICAN rims and they have been faultless over 2 years of riding.

If I was going Chinese frame again I’d consider ICAN

Carbonda is another well regarded company worth looking at, avoid the really cheap frames.

Another vote for ICAN having had two sets of wheels and two frames. No issues and their customer comms has been spot on.

Come on tell me you bought one & it hasn’t cracked & killed you on the first ride, or tell me to look elsewhere.

err… I bought one and it cracked on the first ride but didn’t kill me. Satisfied? 🙂

I DIY repaired mine and got a good years usage out of it (sport XC racing, proper mtb, and bridleway mile bashing). It was a good fit and I enjoyed riding it despite the slightly dated geometry (looks the same as the TideAce you linked). I think buying direct from the established Chiner companies that have been around for a decade and a name to protect is probably fine. I’d avoid eBay though.

From what I can see (so could be wrong), one of the companies recommended above doesn’t appear to have any legal entity or VAT registration in the UK.

So whilst they are shipping from within the UK by DHL or whatever, it seems very unclear if they will have actually paid the required duties and how the goods came to be here. That potentially means that somewhere along the line things aren’t quite as they should be from a financial / payments perspective.

The fact that Ican doesn’t list where exactly it’s UK warehouse address is or any info other than ‘it’s in the UK’, and Europe ones being in Germany and Belgium has actually put me off buying from them in the past.
I prob spent a good hour googling them and couldn’t find any company info that wasn’t China based, to the point when I bought items with two other (nextie and light bicycle) China based suppliers rather than Ican (both with no issues and prepaying tax).

I’ve recently had issues importing a further set of rims from China though (still in transit after 2months) which are currently stuck in an airport in China with the UK travel ban.

cheddarchallenged- I remember Yishun had a Germany address, not sure if anyone mentioned it above
https://www.yishunbike.com/germany_d3

[edit] I have never bought from them so not saying it’s legit!

Hongfu Bikes, I,ve had 2 road and 1 MTB frames all great + 2 sets of wheels and they are bulletproof.

Have got one of the Airwolf hardtails (the ones suspiciously close to SC Highball geo) but not built it up yet. Seems fine for the money out of the box though.

Look for “Crown Performance” on youtube for more on the ICAN P9, they look nice and I’m pretty tempted to get one in for big bike duties.

Those Ican frames look good value, might be tempted to build something up….

Thank you all for the Input, great stuff.